“No. But it’s a fringe benefit I don’t object to. All who practice inhuman magic are not evil.”
Rueful amusement chased frustration from her eyes. “Do you ever stop planning and calculating?” she demanded, giving in and turning toward the door.
“Yes.”
She glanced back over her shoulder, uncertain, but he only smiled and ushered her downstairs.
There was a small window halfway down the spiral staircase—not of a huge amount of use to an attacker, but a weakness nevertheless. Elizabeth was doing very well with it when the female hunter, Mihaela, suddenly came out of the middle bedroom and stood staring up at them. Distracted, Elizabeth broke off to look down at her friend and the enchantment unraveled.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mihaela said. She stared not at Elizabeth but at Saloman.
“Enchanting,” Elizabeth said excitedly. “Saloman’s teaching me. It’ll keep the house safe from attacks like last night’s.”
Konrad, the descendant of Ferenc, appeared from the nearest room. The Hungarian, István, came running upstairs to see what was going on. Saloman sighed and sat down on the stairs.
“Is that what he says?” Konrad demanded.
“Yes,” Elizabeth answered, with just a hint of defiance. “That’s what he says.”
“And by the time we discover it’s no more than mumbo jumbo it’s too late to realize you’ve just been lulled into a false sense of security!”
“Oh, Konrad, for—” Elizabeth began.
“What would be the point?” Saloman interrupted. Although he didn’t trouble to raise his voice, it cut through the rising irritation in Elizabeth’s without trouble, and she bit her lip to prevent the words she’d regret from tumbling out.
The hunters all stared at him.
He said mildly, “I am in your house. If I choose to consume a banquet of hunters, I am already in the perfect position.”
Konrad’s eyes flickered. “Yes, thanks for that, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth’s eyes flashed with anger, making her look rather splendid as well as incredibly beautiful. But she had herself under control now. She simply said, “You’re welcome. Well, Konrad, I want to make the house safe for us. If you don’t believe in the mumbo jumbo, despite Budapest in May, when you saw the vampire Travis’s enchanting in practice—and Dante’s—you’ll have no objection to my performing it in your room. Though with any luck you can take the boards down and even the mosquitoes won’t get in.”
With which she took a deep breath and turned back to Saloman. “Do I need to start again?”
He inclined his head, and she began again to enchant the window on the stairs. As she did so, he listened, correcting the odd word or sign when necessary while keeping his gaze on the silently watching hunters.
After exchanging a quick glance with her colleagues, Mihaela simply watched Elizabeth, a sharp frown of anxiety marring a brow that carried too much care already. István and Konrad stood behind her, exchanging low-voiced plans that they seemed to imagine Saloman couldn’t hear. Fortunately, they didn’t act on any of them.
When Saloman, from his seat on the step, pronounced himself satisfied, Elizabeth gave a triumphant grin, as if she’d passed a particularly difficult school examination, and ran downstairs to the ground floor.
Saloman rose to his feet. As he descended the stairs, the hunters fell back to let him pass. It might have been progress.
There were many entrances to secure on the ground floor: not only the front door and windows, but French doors opening onto the garden too. Although Elizabeth went to work with enthusiasm and growing skill, she refused to recognize her tiredness.
Rest, he commanded inside her head.
When I’ve finished, she insisted.
She was enjoying herself, getting some kind of exultation out of the spells themselves. Saloman thought back over the centuries and with difficulty remembered something very similar. He’d been a child, barely twelve years old in his first existence. His father, eternally critical, had been dismissive of his early attempts, insisting he had no aptitude, that there was no strength in his mind to support even the weakest enchantment. But Luk, already undead, a powerful and respected seer, had shown him otherwise.
For an instant Saloman lost himself in the memory of running in huge excitement from dwelling to dwelling and on into the forest, enchanting whatever caught his attention. He’d laughed between spells, feeling his energy soar, and with it new happiness and triumph. Luk had watched him with indulgent pride, smiling. Afterward, Saloman had slept for two days. His parents had received several complaints because the villagers couldn’t get into their houses; the other children had found that certain favored trees in the forest had become inexplicably impossible to climb.
And so Saloman smiled at Elizabeth’s pleasure mirroring his own, and secretly patched up the mistakes her tiredness began to cause her to make. Later, he’d hammer home the importance of thoroughness; for now, she should enjoy her triumph, as he had done.
The hunters stood or sat watching in the background. When Elizabeth asked permission to secure their bedrooms, they merely shrugged. But only Mihaela accompanied her upstairs.
Konrad shouted after them, “I don’t want him in my room!”
Saloman sighed. “It’s as well I’ve become inured over the centuries to human ingratitude.”
“What have humans got to be grateful to you for?” Mihaela snapped over her shoulder. “Apart from a race of bloodsucking killers stalking their streets.”
Elizabeth, her hand lifting to Konrad’s broken window, paused. Her slightly glazed eyes focused on Mihaela, then flickered to Saloman and back. She frowned, parting her lips to speak. But this was not the time, not for Elizabeth.
“Enchant,” he said. “Talk later.”
She no longer ran from window to window. Her feet dragged. By the time they stood in the third bedroom, Mihaela’s, her words were slurring and Saloman had to hold her hand to the window.
Mihaela, who’d been watching stony-faced in the doorway, moved forward in clear alarm, but with gritty determination, Elizabeth forced herself through the ritual, although when she finished and turned away with relief, she stumbled and Saloman had to catch her in his arms.
Clever girl. I knew you could do it. Your gift is strong.
She smiled sleepily into his shoulder, warm with gratitude and pride in herself.
“What’s wrong?” Mihaela asked, fright making her voice too high and loud. “What’s happening to her?”
“She’s exhausted. It uses considerable energy, and this is all new to her. She’ll sleep now.”
He brushed past the hunter, carrying Elizabeth into the hallway and on up to her bedroom. Concentrating on Elizabeth, he soothed her overexcited, weary mind to make it possible for her to sleep. Somewhere, she fought him, determined to enjoy her new skill as sometimes she resisted sleep to enjoy more loving with him; but behind that was recognition of his care, and gratitude shown in the faint fluttering caress of her mind against his. He’d never felt that before, and it moved him unbearably.
The hunter’s sharp, determined footsteps dogging his irritated him. Ignoring her, he laid Elizabeth on the bed and smoothed the hair from her face. She smiled, turning into his hand so that it lay under her cheek. If the hunter had not been there, he would have kissed her. As it was, he contented himself with a faint caress of his fingers on her face before sliding them free as she drifted into the sleep of recovery.
Mihaela stood at the foot of the bed, white-faced and thin-lipped. Hostility radiated from her, and yet, recognizing that it came more from love of Elizabeth than hatred of him, he found himself warming toward her.
“She needs to sleep,” he said as he straightened. “After that, she will be fine.”
Mihaela’s gaze flew up to him, then back to her friend. “Isn’t it enough for you to have her in thrall?” she said intensely. “Does she have to be like you too?”
Saloman regarded her. “S
he doesn’t have to be or do anything. She makes choices.”
“Some choices she shouldn’t have to make!” Mihaela swung away from him, her steps quick and angry.
“She should, perhaps, be kept in ignorance, hearing only one side of a story? Like you?”
Mihaela spun back, her large, dark eyes spitting with rage. “Oh, trust me, I’ve had all the information I need to choose sides since I was eight years old!”
Saloman could have looked, read it from her mind faster than she could consciously think it. But there was no need. He could guess most of it. “I’m sorry for your pain.”
The anger that had flushed her pale face drained away, leaving only the pain itself—and something like bafflement. She let out a brief, humorless laugh. “Shit, you’re good. I almost believe you. What is it you want, Saloman?”
Saloman raised one eyebrow. “From her or from you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is that what this is about? Are you using her to get to us? Why?”
“No,” said Saloman, with perfect truth. Although, as he’d already told Elizabeth, he never objected to side benefits. “From the moment I took her from the Angel in Budapest, there has been no compulsion. She chooses to be with me from love.”
Mihaela’s lip curled. “Yes? Then why doesn’t she choose it more often?”
Her words were like the twist of a wooden stake already buried in his flesh and so familiar that most of the time it went almost unnoticed. Although Elizabeth had promised to make her second home wherever he was, she came to him all too rarely. He didn’t care to be reminded of the fact. For the first time in many years, he found it difficult to hold a human’s gaze.
“She has her own life,” he said evenly. “As you do.”
“She certainly deserves her own life,” Mihaela countered. “A husband and children. Mutual trust and respect.”
Trust. “Shit, you’re good,” he mocked. “I almost believe you. But I think you’re projecting your own desires rather than Elizabeth’s.”
Her breath caught; the hectic flush came back. But although her voice shook, she spoke still with furious intensity. “Why can’t you just leave her alone?”
“As you are?” Saloman inquired, strolling past her to open the bedroom door. “Does being alone make you happy, Mihaela?”
He held the door open for her, and the struggle over whether to obey his clear command was waged visibly across her face. At last, with a quick glance back at Elizabeth, she snapped, “Happier than I would be enslaved to a bloodsucking killer.”
She brushed past him out of the room, and Saloman, prepared now to follow where the discussion led, stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him.
Mihaela halted on the first step and turned to face him with conscious bravery. Saloman liked her. Loneliness was something he recognized all too easily, and he wished better for the troubled hunter.
“Elizabeth is my friend,” she said carefully, as if this were something he might not understand. “I care for her.”
“I know that,” he said gravely.
Her tongue flickered out, licking her dry lips. Behind the repression, he suspected, lurked a passionate woman capable of great happiness. “Sometimes,” she muttered, “it has crossed my mind that in your own way, you also care for her.”
“How very perceptive of you.”
Under his mockery, her indignation rallied. “Yes,” she agreed, “it is. Because your way isn’t hers; you must see that. You don’t, you can’t, understand each other.”
“Difference does not preclude understanding.”
“No, but it makes it bloody difficult,” Mihaela retorted. “If you weren’t so damned smug, you’d know that you don’t understand her. You haven’t the faintest inkling that you make her unhappy. You’ve no idea that it hurts her not to travel with you, that you don’t trust her enough to tell her where you are. You treat her like a pet! ‘Come, Elizabeth, here’s your petting ration for the month. Now go and play with your trivial friends while I’m busy with grown-up things like bloodsucking, murder, and world domination.’ And trust me, Saloman, she wouldn’t tolerate even that if she thought you knew what it did to her. So she hides it from you. She pretends she doesn’t care about the hurt because she doesn’t trust you enough to show it!”
Mihaela pressed herself back into the wall, probably with terror, reminding Saloman to resume control of his facial features.
What a pity I promised Elizabeth not to kill her friends.
Mihaela’s brown eyes were huge in her pale face. Under his haughty stare, the flash of defiance died into something closer to a plea.
“You must see that’s no way for her to live,” she whispered. “She’s losing everything she is, everything that makes her Elizabeth, just to spend a few days a year with you. Her whole life could disappear like that if you don’t free her. Don’t make her grow old and die like this. While you live on and on, if—”
She broke off to catch her breath.
“If someone doesn’t manage to stake me?” Saloman supplied. The hunter’s words shook him, angered him, mixing truth with possibility, untruth with a disturbing perception that owed nothing to telepathy and everything to intelligent humanity. He managed, not without difficulty, to hold on to his own intelligence, his own plans.
Leaning his head to one side, he regarded Mihaela. “You are a good and decent being,” he observed. “I can see why Elizabeth loves you. But your sharp perception is somewhat blinkered. Is a glass half-empty or half-full? Do we concentrate on the differences or on the similarities?”
Mihaela frowned, but didn’t interrupt. Saloman let his lips curve. “I don’t hate you because some other human chained up my friend, tortured him, and starved him. Why should you hate me for what some other vampire did to you or yours?”
“I’ve fought vampires all my life. I’ve met, observed, and killed rather more than a few!”
“But you’re always fighting the same one, aren’t you, Mihaela?” he said softly, and at last she tore her gaze free.
“What has this got to do with you and Elizabeth?” she all but snarled.
“Everything,” said Saloman. “You misjudge me as you misjudge my people. There is good even in modern vampires, although they need to be taught and disciplined.”
“They need to be eradicated!”
Saloman smiled. “Once a hunter, always a hunter; once a vampire, always a vicious, thoughtless killer. That is no way to move forward. Would it surprise you to know that my people walked the earth before yours could stand upright? Yet I would not take the world from you. I merely deny your right to take it from me. We lived together before; we can do so again.”
“As human slaves?” Mihaela said with contempt. “I don’t think so.”
“I do not want slaves. Neither Elizabeth nor anyone else.”
Saloman smiled and waited until he was sure she could think of nothing to say, and then he inclined his head with civility and, opening the bedroom door, stepped back inside.
Mihaela went slowly downstairs and into the kitchen, where she grabbed the coffeepot and sloshed the remaining coffee into a cup. It looked like mud, but she stirred in two spoonfuls of sugar and gulped it down.
From the French window, Konrad turned and watched her.
István, his laptop open in front of him at the dining room table, swiveled in his chair. “Everything okay?”
Mihaela’s hands shook as she laid the cup noisily back on its saucer. “That guy scares the shit out of me.”
Konrad strode toward her. István stood up.
“Did he—” Konrad began.
Mihaela flapped one hand. “No, no. He’s under some sort of promise to Elizabeth that he seems prepared to keep. He never touched me or her in that way. It’s just . . .” She sighed and flopped into the chair beside István. “He’s big. Everything about him is big, overwhelming. But the really scary bit is when he starts to make sense.”
But I won’t give in. And I won’t let him
have Elizabeth.
Chapter Eight
Elizabeth’s dream was intense and sexy, and when she awoke, the first person she saw was Saloman. Although she’d been reluctant to leave the dream, it faded quickly as she realized reality was at least as good.
He sat on the bed, so close to her that the sleeve of his snowy white shirt stirred to the rhythm of her breath. His dark gaze held hers, and butterflies swooped in her stomach. She smiled. “Hello.”
“Hello. You have visitors.”
Bugger. The flicker of his eyes warned her they were in this room, not waiting for her elsewhere. She sat up as she turned on the bed and saw all three hunters lined up between her and the bedroom door.
“What’s happening?” she said weakly.
“We have a lead on the vampires. Mustafa and the others found two bodies in an isolated cottage.”
Elizabeth’s false, cozy happiness slid away, leaving her cold. She glanced at Saloman. “Does it tie in with your observations? Do we know if it’s where you left them?”
“It is where I left them.”
The hunters glared at him. “Why the hell didn’t you say?” Konrad demanded.
“You didn’t ask me. It doesn’t matter. They’re not there now.”
“We know that, but they must be close by. Judging by when the owners were killed, it was almost dawn.”
“They’re a hundred miles east of the cottage. And traveling.”
“How?”
“Internal combustion engine,” Saloman said dryly.
István was frowning. “How could they go out and steal a car in daylight?”
“Someone must have been unfortunate enough to visit the cottage,” Elizabeth said. She turned again to Saloman. “Do you know where they’re going?”
“Right now? No.”
“Can we catch up with them?”
“Probably not; your detectors don’t have enough range.”
“If you were with us . . .” Elizabeth urged.
“I have to go to Istanbul, and then Budapest.”
He could, she thought, deprive her of breath in so many different ways. “Now? Why?”
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